For anyone with an interest in the history of clothing, dress, textiles, lace and embroidery, paricularly of the early modern period, 1550-1750

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Muckinder or muckender

Katherine Seymour, Countess of Hertford, with her son Edward, c.1563

Muckinder is a wonderful word for what was basically a cloth
to clean children’s faces and hands. Recent costume historians have described
it variously, it appears in several of Cunnington’s works (1965), (1970), and (1972), as well as in Anne
Buck’s work on children’s clothes(1996) and most recently in
the Tudor Child. (Huggett, 2013) According to the online Oxford English
Dictionary it appears from around 1420 as a mokedour or mokedore, when it seems
to indicate simply a handkerchief. The spelling had changed by the early
sixteenth century when it becomes more closely associated with children, as in,
“mockendar for chyldre.” (Palsgrave, J., Lesclarcissement, 1530)

In Peter Erondell’s
The French Garden (St. Clare Byrne, 1949) there is a dialogue in the form of a mother speaking to the
nurse of a still partially swaddled child. It goes through undressing and
dressing the child. After his biggin (cap), band (collar), petticoat, coat,
sleeves, and bib are put on the nurse is enjoined, “Let him have his gathered
apron with strings, and hang a muckinder to it.”

Huggett and Mikhaila
(2013) analysing images of children suggest that boys had muckinders more
commonly than girls, probably because the girls continued to wear aprons. Boys
ceased to wear aprons by about the age of about three, but still needed
something to clean their face and hands. “One must wipe his mouth with a
Muckinder.” (Middleton, 1607)

An early depiction
of one of these cloths hanging from a boy’s belt appears in the 1504 St
Paul’s altarpiece at Augsburg. This is by Hans Holbein the Elder, and the
bottom right hand corner of the left portion of the triptych shows two boys,
believed to be Holbien’s sons, one of whom clearly has a muckinder hanging from
his belt.

A later example
shown above right is seen in Katherine Seymour, Countess of Hertford, the younger sister of Lady
Jane Grey, with her son Edward. As Edward was born in 1561 the painting is
dated to c.1563. The muckinder is again hung from his waist and is of white
linen with a border across the bottom, and some form of edging which is
difficult to see. The decoration is most likely blackwork, compare it to this handkerchief
of 1600-1620 in the Glasgow
Museums collection, but woven towels of this period also have borders, as
in this example in the Victoria and
Albert Museum.

Muckinders continue
to be worn in this way until the mid seventeenth century. There is a portrait
of William, Lord Petrie at the age of 6, with a lace edged muckinder hanging
from his waist, unfortunately I cannot find an online image of it, but in
appears, in black and white, in Buck (1996)

Buck, A.
1996.Clothes and the
child. Carlton : Ruth Bean, 1996.

Cunnington, C. W.
and P. 1970.Handbook of English
Costume in the 16th century. London : Faber, 1970.

—. 1972.Handbook of English costume in the seventeenth
century. 3rd ed. London : Faber, 1972.